Zenna Vortex: House of Iniquity
by LA Knight
Summary: A strange disease strikes. 4 women hold the key: Remy, Sasha, Eustacia, and Lucinda. In the aftermath of brutal emotional trauma, House & his crew are sucked into a vicious world of violence, sickness, passion, death, & love. H/13/OC/Cam/Cud, Wil/OC/Amber
1. 000 And Then There Were 3

**Chapter Zero  
Prologue  
And Then There Were Three**

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"Okay, what do we got?" House demanded, limping into his office.

Dr. Hadley saw the way his fingers tightened around the grip of his cane, and knew he'd either run out of Vicodin or the pain in his leg was exceptionally bad this morning. But she didn't say any of that out loud. She was more preoccupied with the tickling sensation in the back of her throat and the lancing pain across her abdomen.

"Twenty-six-year-old Caucasian female," Talb replied, reading off of the med chart. "No history of health problems _at all._ Complaining of severe cramping in the upper abdomen. Also, racking cough, and a lung bleed. Severely anemic. Necrosis on her back. Complaining of migraine, suffering black outs."

"Okay, so, _what_ exactly would cause _all_ of those things? Coughing, necrosis, lung bleed, stomach cramping, anemia, migraines, and blackouts?"

Remy Hadley swallowed hard. She hadn't looked at the name on the file... why hadn't she looked? Because all of those symptoms were the result of a disease she knew quite well, a disease that only struck a certain demographic and had everything to do with genetics and nothing to do with anything else. And she couldn't tell House because they'd never believe her.

"What's the name on the file?" Dr. Hadley asked suddenly. Her four colleagues glanced at her, and then Talb glanced back at the file before raising his eyes back up to her anxious face.

"Eustacia Hadley."

.

In the room with the unconscious Eustacia Hadley, a woman stood by the bed, her back to the wall. She kept her arms loose by her sides, her hair swept back and tied up in a tight bun to remove a target. Her tight, black leggings and skin tight, black spaghetti-strap overshirt were for the same reason- minimalize the target. It was all part of how she'd grown up. Stay tight, fast, alert, and you come out on top. You come out alive. Never mind what people think of how you look or how you act. Do what you have to do to stay alive.

Sasha Rampling cast a swift glance around the room. If Eustacia had been awake, the unconscious woman would have realized- or at least guessed- that her foster sister was looking for potential weapons and all available exits out of the room.

Unfortunately, there was only one, unless she shot her way through the plastic walls. And she was pretty sure that her other foster sister, who worked here at this pathetic homo sapien healing center, would be a little pissed off about Sasha shooting up the hospital room.

The black haired woman sincerely hoped it didn't come to that.

.

Lucinda Rampling coughed into her fist as she staggered into her room. She had to stay away from the children! As her stomach cramped violently, the only thought that shuddered through her mind was to keep away from her foster children. Some of them were still susceptible to the disease!

The phone rang shrilly, cutting into the tense stillness of the master bedroom. Instinctively, she knew it was Remy, her third oldest child. Her first daughter. Lucinda grabbed the phone and gasped into it, "Remy!"

"Mom!?"

"Remy, call your father," she barely managed to wheeze. "Call..." Blood streamed from between her lips. She spat a gob of scarlet onto the floor. "C-call..." She tried again, and everything blurred out. She fell to the floor.

"Mom? **_MOM!_**"

.

Remy Hadley punched her foster's father number into her cell, and got Marius Rampling on the third ring. Breathless as she rushed from Dr. House's office down the stairs to Eustacia's room, she asked desperately, "Dad! Are you outside the house?"

"I- yes, I-"

"Get Mom to _my_ hospital. Eustacia's here already, and we've got her guarded. Sasha's probably here, knowing her. I'm at the Princeton-Plainsborough Teaching Hospital. Okay?"

"Remy, what's going-"

"Mom collapsed! Go get her and bring her here!" She snarled, and flapped her phone shut as she swept into Eustacia Hadley's room. To the slender, somewhat short woman standing guard over the patient with a knife half-drawn at the hurried entrance, Hadley added, "Put the knife away, Sasha."

"Where the heck did you come from?"

"Mom just collapsed," Remy replied, ignoring the actual question. Running a hand through her hair, disheveling it, the doctor sank down into a chair and let her head fall into her hands. Sighing, she asked softly, without looking up, "What are we gonna do? We have to do something. What do we do?"

"We don't tell _humans_ about our problems," Sasha reminded her acidly. "Or have you forgotten this?" She resheathed the knife, scanning the room again. "You shouldn't have had Eustacia brought here in the first place. This is a human hospital."

"I'm a _human_ doctor!" Remy reminded her.

"No, you're a _practioner_ of _human medicine_."

"That's the same thing!"

"Not even close to the same thing," Sasha snapped. "You _act_ human, you _live_ human, you _work with_ humans. You even have a human disease, one that will one day force you to give up this foolish lifestyle and become as you were _meant to be_. All these _human_ things you cling to, as if they will somehow change who and what you are, but they will _never make you human, Rena._"

"Don't call me Rena!" Dr. Hadley snapped, running another shaking hand through her already disheveled hair.

Sasha opened her mouth to say more, then snapped it shut with a click. Gritting her teeth, she murmured, "Never mind. It's already hit Mom and Eustacia. It's spreading. If it spreads widely enough, it could spread to bitten humans. If it spreads to bitten humans, the whole state of New Jersey is screwed. So again, I have to know why you brought our sister here when these human doctors can't do anything for her."

"Because!" Remy began, but when Sasha glanced almost spastically at the door, she lowered her voice. "Because, the odds of anyone thinking to look for and then coming after Eustacia in a human hospital are incredibly slim and we have you here to watch her. No self-respecting assassin would come in with more than a few helpers. You can handle a few helpers."

"What about Mom? And 'Stacia? No one's ever found a cure for Vlad's Syndrome and you know what happens in the end. We're going to have to-"

"No," Remy said gently, and got to her feet, checking her watch. Lucinda Rampling should've arrived at the ER by now. The Rampling Estate wasn't far from the hospital. "No, we won't have to. If anyone can figure out how to treat or cure Vlad's Syndrome, it's Dr. House."

She was about to walk out when Sasha murmured, sounding almost like a little girl, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," she replied. "Yeah, I'm sure."

"And what if it's not Vlad Syndrome?" Sasha demanded. Now she sounded more like the battle weary warrior, still ready to take on any enemy, surmount any challenge. Remy didn't want to answer her sister's question, because... because she didn't know what would happen if it wasn't Vlad's Syndrome.

"I... I don't know, Sasha. I just don't know."

.

_._

_Okay, everyone, here's the prologue. "And then there were three" refers to who's got the disease. Eustacia Hadley, Lucinda Rampling, and... our mystery 3rd. _

_Anyway, so I'm trying something new. This is a romance/paranormal/dark fantasy/suspense. I like House. I love it. Gregory House is a genius stud. Drools. So, I'll try to have chapter one up by tomorrow or Friday. Hope you enjoyed it, and I'll try to pump up the volume (aka the writing coolness level) for the next chap. _

_Bye._


	2. 001 The Key Players

**Chapter One  
The Key Players**

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Predator.

That's what was standing in his patient's room. Coiled taut as a bowstring, her gleaming eyes like jagged emerald green glass slashed and stabbed at the room, took in every little detail, processing it with the speed of a high powered super-computer. Her eyes practically danced, sharp and jerking as she stared at the doctor limping into her foster-sister's room. Her mouth was stretched into an almost sardonic grin, baring very straight, very pretty, white teeth. It reminded House of a blood thirsty hyena. The way she stood there, her entire body tense and ready to spring, to attack, made the hair on the back of his neck stand up as if electrified.

"Um... who are _you_?" He demanded. Why was there some strange, homicidal looking chick in his patient's room, glaring at him with an almost Glasgow Grin and a pair of crystalized poison eyes?

"Eustacia Hadley's bodyguard," she replied, crossing her arms beneath what had to be C-cup breasts bound tight to her chest with what looked like three incredibly constricting, incredibly thin camisoles, alternately black, white, and black. He could see the straps striping her narrow, porcelain-bone shoulders. She looked slender enough to break. What was she made of, china? What kind of bodyguard was _she_ supposed to be?

He asked her, and the chick replied, "One who could very easily snap the important things in your body that hold you together. I studied human anatomy for a year, just to learn that. So don't bother me."

She jerked a thin black hair tie from the bun she'd inexpertly knotted her hair up into, letting it cascade down her back before she plunged one finely boned hand through the massive wealth of jet black hair. It seemed to him like a compulsive gesture. This girl, this supposed "bodyguard," felt nervous. She didn't like being here, in this hospital. Most people didn't like being in hospitals, but it wasn't the same for this slender woman standing so tense and protective over his currently unconscious patient. She didn't like being here because she was terrified for her life, and hiding it behind that lazy, almost manic grin and those eyes. She felt more vulnerable than she was probably used to feeling. All this he picked up from the way she was dressed, the way she held herself, the way she kept herself poised and ready to lash out.

And House noticed something else, as well, as the slender woman refolded her arms and pressed her fingers into her upper arms, almost biting into the flesh. Her black leggings and black, patchwork micro-miniskirt were slung low, settled beneath the hipbones practically stabbing through that oh so white skin. Skin so white, it was nearly transparent. Bones jutting so far they cast shadows on that skin. A shiny, throbbing red burn seeped upwards from beneath the waistband of her skirt onto her incredibly flat stomach. The burn was framed by a cloud of soft violet- a bruise.

"Where did you get that burn?" He asked.

"I got spanked with a red hot poker for being naughty," she snarked back, and kept her fingers pressed tightly into her upper arms.

Well, this was interesting. He hadn't even really paid attention to the patient yet, but the bodyguard was intriguing. Didn't her body hurt from being so tense? Her muscles had to be groaning by now. Was she on pain meds or something for chronic muscle pain? Did she do yoga? And was she serious about the poker? Now there was a kinky, incredibly interesting question... because who the hell spanked a bodyguard with a red hot poker?

"What's your name?" He hazarded the question. There'd been nothing mentioned by his team about a bodyguard. Since the only doctor who'd set foot in the room was his little Huntington victim-wench, he wanted to see if this woman, like the patient, had the last name of Hadley.

"Bond," the woman replied. "James Bond."

"And the award for the biggest pain in my ass for today is-"

"Olivia Wilde."

"Nice try," he replied, the corner of his mouth curling into an acidically sarcastic smirk. "She's an actress. I watch her all the time on the OC. Gimme a better one."

"Adler, Irene."

"The only woman documented in cannon to defeat Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, at his own game. Opera singer, actress, former mistress of the King of Bohemia. Holmes kept her portrait in his desk drawer along with his cocaine stash. A non-fictional, non-celebrity name would be such an innovation, don't you think?"

"Anne Roquelaure."

"And now we move from Victorian mystery literary figures to modern day sadomasochistic erotica authoress." At her suprised look, he added, "I have an extensive reading list. Next lie."

When he said the word "lie," her entire body tightened, a guitar string pulled so taut it almost screamed. Her eyes widened, and the knife-edge of her rictus grin dipped just a little, as if tipping its hat to a passerby. Her hands spasmed, her nails sinking into her flesh enough to draw little crescent shaped lakes of blood. Her gaze shattered, reassembled, narrowed, zeroing in on his face. For a moment, her pupils seemed to burn like magnesium.

"Fine. I'll give you the name."

"Oh?" He asked, almost as if he were surprised. "What name is that?"

She practically spat the next syllables at him.

"_James. Wilson_."

She didn't jump or start in surprise when he slammed the rubber-sealed end of his cane against one of the walls. She showed no reaction at all. She just continued to watch him, her eyes blazing with something that was too immediate, fresh, and new tp be hatred but too fiery and hellish to be anything so tame as dislike. It was like being snarled at by a rabid dog or being watched by a flesh-hungry raptor.

"Who the hell _are you_? Tell me now or I have you tossed out of here."

Apparently, that seemed to work. She almost flinched. He could see her visibly steel herself, actually force herself not to react to the potentiality of being thrown out of the room where her current employer lay still slumbering on, despite the staggeringly loud snapping-thumping sound. He saw the bodyguard straighten her shoulders, tick her head sharply to the side to crack a vertebrae, readying herself for what his threat was about to violently drag from between her perfect, clenched teeth.

"Rampling."

"I'm sorry," he said loud, putting his free hand to his right ear. He leaned toward her. The antagonism rolling off of her in waves was so tangible, he could practicaly taste it, bittersweet and puckering. He continued, "I didn't quite catch that one."

"I said, _Rampling_!"

"Are you from New Orleans?" He asked sarcastically. As if he didn't know that Anne Rampling was a penname for the once-prolific vampire queen, Anne Rice of the _Interview with a Vampire_ idea. As if he didn't know that there was an old-fashioned, incredibly expensive mansion in the French Quarter (one of the few still standing after Katrina) that was affectionately called by many neighbors the Rampling Estate. As if he didn't know that the name Rampling was... wait...

"You're a member of the Rampling-Hadley family?!"

"Um, yeah," she snarled sarcastically. "Hence the name Rampling. Hence the fact that anyone under the age of thr-thirty years old with the last name of Hadley was raised by my mother, Lucinda Rampling. You got a problem with that?"

"Nope," he mumbled, but suddenly, he wasn't paying attention to her. He was looking at his patient. The golden haired woman lying on that hospital bed hadn't moved at all, not even twitched, when he'd slammed his cane against the wall. What didn't surprise him, actually, was the fact that apparently, from her vital signs and EEG read outs, his patient was in a coma.

What _did _surprise him was the fact that someone as attentative to her employer as that Sasha Rampling was paid to be hadn't noticed that comatose state. Potential indicator of guilt?

"Nope," he added, staring at the woman lying on the bed. "I've got a problem with _this._"

.

"Okay, _now_ what do we got?" House demanded, as he limped into his office.

Gripping his cane, he stumped over to his chair and sank down onto the cushy seat. He propped his bad leg by the foot onto the slab of his desktop, staring at the ceiling. He needed to focus. Focusing would be good. His patient was comatose. Her bodyguard apparently hadn't noticed. That was weird. Okay. Focus on the case. Don't think about the fact that he couldn't step outside and walk the scant yards to Dr. James Wilson's office and talk to his best friend...

Right. Focus.

When the diagnostic genius wasn't instantaneously regailed with the details of the new symptom- and apparently, a couple of new patients, which he probably needed to know about, maybe, sorta, _definitely_- he briefly glanced at three of his four prize goons and gestured impatiently for them to speak. "Um... _hello?!_"

"Our first patient has fallen into a coma," Foreman began, but the curmudgeon he worked for snapped, "Yeah, I know that. I was there when it happened. Give me something I don't know."

"Wait, you were _there_?" The dark-skinned man repeated. "Maybe that's why she's comatose."

"Oh, you're funny. And uh, yeah, I was there. Talking to her bodyguard. So, is someone going to tell me what causes all of our symptoms? Coughing, epidermal necrosis, lung bleed, stomach cramping, severe anemia, migraines, blackouts, and coma?"

"HELLP Syndrome," Kutner shot out.

"Nope," House replied, "not pregnant. Next!"

"Spirochetes Disease," Foreman added.

"Wrong," House snapped, twirling his cane in one hand. "Only explains migraines, blackouts, stomach cramping, and anemia. What about the necrosis, cough, and lung bleed? Does she have gangrene? Obviously not. Next."

"Decompression sickness?" Talb hazarded.

"No," Remy piped up from the doorway. She'd just returned from from Eustacia's room. Ignoring the speculative glances prodding her to extrapolate her theory, she sank gracefully into her seat and laid the file in her hand on the glass table top. She stared at the medical file, tapping idly against the manilla folder with her index and middle finger. "No," she repeated. "Eustacia doesn't scuba dive. She's terrified of water. It was hard enough getting her to take baths as a kid."

"You _know_ her?" Foreman demanded.

Remy glanced up, her expression almost poisonous as she snapped, "She's my foster sister. Hadley's not exactly a common na-"

"Shut up," House snapped, and everyone fell silent. "We haven't gotten a patient history yet because the patient says she never had any health problems before. She never had migraines before?" Remy shook her head. "Never got a cold?" Another head shake. "Never even got a tummy ache?" Again with the shaking of the head. "Are you _certain_?" House got a nod this time. He knew that Dr. Hadley was a smart woman, or he never would've hired her. And a smart woman knew never to lie to a doctor, because then her hospitalized foster sister could get misdiagnosed and possibly- probably- die. "What about the other two patients? We got a..." He checked the file. "Lucinda and Marishka Rampling. You know _them_?"

"Lucinda's our foster mom. Marishka's one of her actual daughters... I think. Marishka never even got the sniffles as a baby. She's never been sick in her life. No strep, no flu, no 24-hour bugs, not even any cavities. And Mom... when she was pregnant, she had problems. Low blood pressure, anemia, migraines, dizziness, vomiting. Vomiting was from morning sickness but everything else was problems with the pregnancies."

"How many times has she been pregnant?" House asked.

"I-I don't know," she replied, looking back down at the medical file of her foster sister.

She couldn't figure out how to steer her boss in the right direction. She knew that there were two underlying problems for what was wrong with Eustacia because Remy knew what had happened a couple days before Eustacia had been brought _to_ the hospital. It was, in fact, the very reason the blonde woman was here and not being seen to by someone else. The lung bleed, cough, and necrosis weren't related to anything else. But she didn't know how to explain that to them without getting into more trouble than she could handle.

Instead, she kept her eyes on the file, sketching its outline with her troubled gaze, and tapped out a comforting rhythm on the folder's surface with her fingers.

"Dysbarism," Kutner cried suddenly, eager and excited. He reminded House of one of those little yappy dogs you just wanted to kick to death to make them stop barking.

"Doesn't explain the necrosis or the anemia," the older man replied.

"Maybe she's just anemic," Kutner shot back.

"Still doesn't explain the necrosis." House waited for almost thirty seconds. "Oh, you're done arguing with me? Ready to get back to saving a patient's life? Good idea. Let's focus on the diagnosis. It's not dysbarism."

"Maybe it's cancer?" Foreman murmured. "Tumors in the lung cause the cough and bleeding. Tumors in the brain cause migraines, blackouts, and coma. Tumors in the stomach can cause cramping. She might originally be anemic and that doesn't have anything to do with the cancer."

"Which doesn't explain the necrosis!" House suddenly yelled. "_Why_ are we forgetting about the necrosis? Cancer does not explain her flesh dying and rotting. Not to mention, cancer would've shown up on the MRI, CT, and X-rays and it didn't. So it's not cancer. And in order for it to be something like necrotic infarction, she'd have to have a blood clot, and we checked for those in case they were causing the coma, the abdominal pain, or any of her other symptoms. So what about the necrosis? Next wrong idea."

Remy took a shallow, almost gasping breath and practically whispered, "What if the necrosis isn't related to what's wrong with her?"

"Um," Foreman replied, before House could. "Sure. Every one of her symptoms is caused by something different. So brilliant of you to figure that out. Now she's going to die because we have no way of knowing what's causing what and how to treat it."

"Why would you say that?" House demanded, before Foreman could ridicule the woman further. He was staring at her intently, taking in every single detail. Her eyes were glazed, her skin suddenly ashen pale, and she was chewing furiously on her bottom lip. Her fingers tapped out a stoccatto rhythm on the table as she stared fixedly at the file in front of her. "What could cause necrosis that excludes everything?"

"Could be lupus-" Foreman began.

Remy yelled, "It's not lupus!" More quietly, a bare whisper under her breath, she added, "Frack." Shoving a hand through her hair, she added, more loudly this time, "Eustacia's highly allergic to silver, as well as yew, ash, elder, and rowan wood. Any exposure could have caused the necrosis."

"An allergic reaction causing necrosis? That's impossible," Foreman snapped.

"It's an allergic reaction," Remy insisted.

"Yeah, right."

"It is!"

"You're crazy!"

"I know my own sister!" Remy cried.

House had to yell at them both to shut up again. When both Dr. Hadley and Dr. Foreman had fallen silent, he hauled himself to his feet and leaned heavily on his cane. His grip was white-knuckled, and his face was drawn, showing the sheer amount of pain he must have been experiencing. Remy realized she hadn't seen him pop his pills since the last meeting. Shrugging that fact from her mind, she trained her eyes and her thoughts on her boss, who stared at her for a very long time. It was almost as if he were scanning her mind, picking through her thoughts to find the truth behind her conviction.

But she couldn't tell him the truth. She couldn't tell House and the rest of the team that everyone in the Rampling-Hadley family was dangerously, highly allergic to silver and certain types of wood. If she spilled that little secret, they'd start asking questions.

Questions were very, very bad.

But for just a moment, it seemed as if she _could_ tell House exactly what was wrong. As if her boss would understand. For a moment she longed to explain to the diagnostician exactly what was going. She ached to tell him, the only person here who respected her and actually gave a damn what she thought and how she felt, ached to tell him all about her life, and running from everyone, and being afraid to make nice with anyone because anyone you fell in love with was in danger. She yearned to explain that Eustacia had been attacked, that her sister was hiding in plain sight so she wouldn't be killed by the people who had tried to murder her. And she wished she could tell someone, anyone, about Radu...

"Do you really think the necrosis is from an allergic reaction?" House demanded.

Remy opened her mouth to spill all of her secrets, to tell him everything, to weep and beg for his help. But all she said was, "Yes."

"Then you're sister, according to the delinquent over there, has cancer. Let's check the mom and the other sister. Who knows? Maybe your house was done with lead paint. Let's go." He turned to stump his way out of the room, when he turned back and added, "Kutner, Foreman. You two are going to break into the Rampling Estate and see if there's anything medically relevant down there."

Remy's heart stopped in her chest, and she forgot how to breathe. The world narrowed down to one incredibly tight, dimly lit tunnel as House's words pinged around inside her head. _Break into the Rampling Estate... _Her heart jerked sideways in her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut, sucking in air as quietly and unobtrusively as she possibly could. She tried to look perfectly calm as everyone filed out in front of her. She only got up from her seat when she was positive her legs wouldn't fold beneath her weight.

They were going to break into her family's main home.

_What would her brother do to them?_

That was all Remy could think of when House told Foreman and Kutner to break into her family's main estate. _No one_ broke into the Rampling Estate. They'd never been burgled, robbed, vandalized. All because of their state of the art security system- her twin brother. And if they broke in, if Kutner or Foreman or anyone not of the Family broke in, there would be repercussions. There would be consequences. And all of the foreseeable futures would involve blood and death.

_What would Radu inflict on her colleagues?_

She had to stop them. But how could she, without revealing her family's secrets? Things would go straight to hell if anything resembling a slip came out of her mouth. How was she supposed to stop a double homicide of slasher-film proportions if she couldn't think of a decent excuse to keep House and his team away from her home?

Suppose... suppose, she thought as she strode down the hall behind her team, absently noting that she would need new sneakers soon, suppose she call ahead. Christian and Bel were still home, the only two of her family not enrolled in school, suffering the degredation of manual labor, or incarcerated at the hospital. The twins could hold Radu at bay. They could make sure he stayed in his room and didn't bother anyone while Kutner and Foreman snooped around. They were a match for her brother, surely.

_Really?_ The irritating little voice in the back of her head asked as she followed everyone into the elevator. _You really think those two are a match for him? And what about your father? Do you think he'd allow humans in his home?_

No, she realized. Marius would never allow it. There were too many unexplainable things in the Rampling Estate. Like the sheer amount of offspring living in the large, New England manor. Like the photographs, carefully hidden away from the passing eyes of random visitors, but not so carefully that the snoop-crew of Dr. Gregory House wouldn't find them and wonder at the remarkable likeness between Lucinda Rampling and her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and on and on until they reach the oldest of Lucinda's many portraits. She'd always warned her mother about her vanity, damn it. And the pictures of the children, and the way the windows were all boarded up so it looked only as though they never pulled back the curtains and damn it all to hell, _what about Radu?!_

_Rena, my love. You have need of me?_

She barely managed to suppress a shudder as a whispery voice like autumn leaves and sere October winds brushed against the inside of her mind. It had been too long- more than a full decade, almost two- since she'd heard Radu's voice echoing necrotically through her mind. He had respected her wishes throughout college and med school and specialty classes that he not contact her this way. Now she was no longer used to the link between them. It felt... invasive. Strange. And he had called her Rena. How long had it been since anyone had called her by her real name without the heat of anger behind it?

_No, Radu,_ she replied, with monumental effort. She wanted to go to her brother and just relax, fall away from the world in the sepulchral embrace of her twin and only blood relation. But she had to resist the temptation. Was she sweating? It felt like rivers of sweat were pouring off of her body as she struggled to maintain a sense of normality. _I have no need of you just now._

_You're lying. But I will leave you with your lies and your pathetic human colleagues for now, since you will not tell me what it is that frightens you so._

_I... I am not frightened._

The voice in her head didn't reply, on laughed that low, intimate, whispering laugh that reminded Remy of days long ago, when she would sit with her brother on the roof of their great manor house and stare at the sky, thinking of what it meant to be children. But now that once comforting laugh only made her uneasy.

Some might wonder why she didn't simply tell Radu that humans were coming to their home. Surely, if she asked him to behave, he would. She _was_ his favorite, after all. Surely he would listen to her.

Except that Remy knew he wouldn't. He thought her... not quite right in the head. He didn't like humans. He thought they were an inferior species and he couldn't understand why she'd done everything in her power to become a human doctor, since she'd already proven almost immune to the anemia that plagued their family and so it wasn't for quick access to blood.

Suddenly remembering herself, she shook her head to clear away the wool-gathering thoughts and saw that they'd just made it to the second floor. Dr. Hadley followed her boss and coworkers out of the elevator. Surreptitiously, she tongued her eyeteeth and incisors, making sure they were the appropriate length. Her brother's mind-touch often caused her body to do inconvenient things.

Like shatter her immune system and allow the genetic anemia of her family to suck her down into thirst, which was something she could not afford in a hospital. She didn't want to attack any of the patients.

.

Sasha crossed her legs at the knee, focusing on the door to her sister's room. She shivered when something like the dry chill of October winds whispered down her spine. She knew immediately that it was the echo of her foster brother's laughter.

_Radu?_ _Here? Impossible. He can't leave the house._

She shivered, but it was only with cold. To be frightened of Remy's twin brother would be as foolish as being frightened of Remy herself, or of that doctor with the bad leg. Why be frightened of a human, or a sibling?

"Hey, Rampling."

Sasha grinned, a feral twist of her mouth. She felt the skin over her lips tighten and split like an overripe peach that oozed blood instead of sweet, tanging juice. Before she let her lips slide back over her teeth to bare them in a bestial snarl, she tongued her eyeteeth and incisors. Still normal, for the most part. A little long, but nothing noticeable. Just enough length to give her that biting edge.

The bodyguard noticed Remy standing behind the doctor leaning on his cane, the woman's eyes wide in her face. She knew what that extra bit of teeth meant.

"You allergic to silver?" House asked. Maybe the problem was genetics. But the bodyguard only quirked an eyebrow and House remembered that they were only foster siblings. Still... "That burn on your hip, where did you get it?" He saw the woman tense in the exact instant that he felt Thirteen, his little Dr. Hadley, go taut as a bowstring. Apparently, the question had hit a nerve with both of them.

"None of your business," Rampling hissed. "Get out."

"Sasha!" Thirteen stepped forward. "Sasha, they... Dr. House only wants to help. He's not our enemy. He thinks the burn might be related, that's all."

"You know it isn't," Sasha Rampling replied, folding her arms beneath her breasts. She let her heels hit the tiled floor with a hollow thump and her hands touched her knees as she leaned forward. "Just because we're here in this place doesn't mean we need to deal with these people. It's a safety precaution only, so why don't you make them go away?"

"A safety precaution?" A middle-aged, balding man demanded, stepping forward. For some reason, he looked as if the very idea were insulting. "Precaution against what?"

"Again with the snooping into things that are not your business. _Shut him up, Rena_."

"Sasha, don't call me-" Dr. Hadley began, but the woman interrupted her, saying, "Go check on Mama and Mari, Remy. I cannot leave Eustacia just now. It isn't safe."

"Your sister doesn't have cancer, does she?" The middle-aged, bald man asked almost gently. Thirteen and Sasha glanced at him, and Thirteen shook her head. "You know what she has, don't you?" Ignoring the blazing, emerald poison stare her sister was leveling at her, Thirteen nodded. Taub went on, "What is it?"

"We can't tell you, but it's not contagious," Thirteen replied.

"Sure as hell looks contagious to me," Taub snapped.

"Humans can't catch it!" Remy yelled without thinking, and clapped a hand to her mouth as Sasha's hand convulsed around the handle of her best knife. Stricken, Remy whispered, "Frack." Sasha found her gaze, and both women turned to Dr. House, who for once was rendered speechless.

Then House's pager went off, and Remy's cell phone rang.

.

Radu watched intently from behind the basement door, his eyes fixed intently on the humans wandering around the Rampling Estate. Mortals trespassing on his family's property. What was Rena thinking, working with these people?

Well, she certainly wouldn't be working with them for long. Had they missed the sign?

_All trespassers will be eaten._

.

.

.

_I combined chapters 1-3 because they were too short and it was bothering me. Not enough was happening to justify having four chapters. So I don't anymore. I also changed some things. If you didn't notice that's fine. Go back and check if you like._

_Will Kutner and Foreman stay away from the Rampling Estate? What will happen to Remy because of her slip-up? What's this strange disease suddenly felling the members of the Rampling-Hadley family? Where's Wilson?_

_Revies, pwease?_


	3. 002 Escalating Violence

**Chapter Two  
Escalating Violence**

.

"Hey, Foreman! Check this out, dude," Kutner mumbled, flipping through the silky, plastic sleeves of a photo album. "There's pictures of Cut-Throat Bitch in here." He held up the album, like it was some kind of offering. Foreman blinked and strode over to the other man from where he'd been inspecting the huge, marble and granite fireplace. He loomed over the cinnamon-skinned man, peering at the pages of the album.

"That's Amber and Thirteen. And our patients." Foreman knelt down to look more closely at the photographs. "But... Amber and Thirteen never acted like anything other than colleagues. Strangers. And... they're foster sisters?"

"Apparently."

"Who's that?" Foreman pointed at one of the pictures, of Thirteen asleep on the shoulder of a man in a cloak and hood. They had to be adults, but they were dressed for Halloween. "Do you know him?"

Kutner shook his head. "Nope... did you hear that?" Somewhere in the gargantuan house, a floorboard creaked. The hair on the back of his neck stood up on end, almost crackling with static expectation. He looked around, but all he saw was the gloomy house with the boarded up windows.

"I... didn't hear anything," Foreman replied, and then mumbled, "I still have to wonder why the windows are boarded up like this. Don't they have children here?"

"Yeah... do you think they have that UV allergy? That might account for the boarded windows and the thick drapes."

"Then, where is everybody?" Foreman murmured, and got to his feet. "This place is absolutely deserted. Not even any pets. If they did have children with UV allergies, they'd be at home. And there ought to be people here. The third woman brought into the hospital-"

"Marishka."

"Yeah, she said three of her siblings were still at home."

Somewhere below them, a floorboard creaked loudly. Kutner jumped and slammed the album shut, dropping the photo-receptacle on the dust-free floor. "Okay, lets get out of here. If any of the family members are still here, we don't want them finding us. We're breaking and entering, remember? Come on. We didn't find anything." He pulled out his slim Razor Phone, trying not to drop it from his sweat-slicked hands. His hands shook as he flipped the phone open and speed-dialed House. It felt as if something were slowly stalking him, silently approaching on slippered feet to pounce, attack, and kill.

_"Yeah?"_

"House, this is Kutner. We didn't find anything in the house. No medications, no alcohol, no toxins. We couldn't even find any cleaners or chemicals."

_"The place must be a pigsty."_

"Actually," the young man replied, scanning once again his luxurious surroundings of velvet, silks, leathers, satins, silver and gold, and expensive woods. "It's the cleanest house we've ever broken into. It's like no one even lives here."

_"Come on back, and we'll talk to Thirteen and the patients again. One of them has to be lying t- what?"_

"I... didn't say any-"

_"Not you. Thirteen. She says you have to get out of the house immediately. Did you trigger an alarm or something?"_

"Not that we know of, why?" The sense of being stalked was slowly building, like the oppressive ticking of a bomb counting down to the exact moment you would die.

_"Thirteen got a call and freaked. She's almost screaming at me to get you guys out of the house. Is there a dog loose?"_

"I don't hear any barking and we found no evidence of any pets. Birds, cats, dogs, rodents, nothing." It sounded like someone fumbled for the phone, and then Thirteen's voice came on the line.

_"Both of you, get the hell out of that house, NOW! Get out, or you're dead. There's someone in the house, he's going to kill you if you don't get out right now! Now get out!"_

The line went dead.

"Okay, that gives me the creeps," the younger man mumbled.

"Why so jumpy?" The black man inquired, perplexed. "What did House say?"

Another creak came from the hallway, loud and long, almost like the floor itself was screaming in agony. Kutner jumped and cried out, heart suddenly pounding.

"What is your problem?" His boss demanded. "It's _just_ a _house_!"

"Oh, no," hissed a dry, sibilant voice like sere October winds. Kutner and Foreman whirled around to see a figure standing in the doorway, with long, worm-like fingers and a thin, ashen face. The ghoulish grin on that corpse-grey face bared cruelly gleaming teeth. "It is not... just... a house. You have trespassed in the house of my father. How dare you?"

"We... what the hell... we were sent by Dr. House-" Foreman began.

"Who you were sent by is of no concern to me. You work with my sister. My twin. Did she allow you here? Did she betray my existence? Tell you to find me? _Betray our father's trust?!_" The volume of his snarling rose with every word that dripped from his gray lips. When he spoke the word "trust," he slammed one malformed fist into the wall. "For her crimes, I shall have your blood."

.

"Christian!" Remy cried desperately into the mouthpiece of her cellular phone, fiercely blocking out the bewildered stares of House and Taub. "Christian, two of my friends are in the house! You've got to do something!"

"_Dammit, Rena, I warned you! Why did you not get them out? It is out of my hands, now."_

"Christian, he'll kill them!"

_"That is the price you pay for consorting with humans."_

"They're trying to help Mama! What does Christabel say?"

"_She's busy. Rena, I understand why you're frightened. You feel guilty because your own foolishness has brought about their deaths. But they have broken into our home, and they will pay the consequences. They are mere mortals, commoners. You'll get over it._"

"But Christian! Christian, wait!" The line went dead. Remy screamed into the phone, "Christian! Christian, no, please! _Christian!!_" She threw the phone without looking to its aim, and the small electronic device was caught by Sasha, who calmly tossed it back to Remy. "Shit. Shit. Shit. He'll kill them. He'll kill them and it's all my fault-"

"Shut up," Sasha snarled, and pulled out her own phone. To House, she added, "Move Marishka and my mother into this room, immediately if you want your two doctors to survive this encounter." Flipping her cell open, she dialed the number for the local high school. She caught a glimpse of the tall, balding doctor going to relay her words to the nurses. "Ophelia?" Sasha spoke into her phone. There was a whisper of sound. "I need you down at the hospital. Flit if you must. You must guard Eustacia." More whispering conversation from the earpiece. "I? _I_ am going home." And she hung up. "Remy, come."

"Wait, where are you going?" House demanded, and grabbed Sasha's arm. An electric tingling began in her fingers, and her teeth began to itch. For a long moment, she stared into the mortal doctor's piercing blue eyes. She swallowed around a sudden lump in her throat. She had to force herself to say the necessary words.

"We're going to rescue your doctors. Either come with me or let me go, but make the choice now before I break your arm."

He let her go, though it required more effort than it should have to release her arm. When she and Thirteen ran off, he stumped after them as quickly as he could, ignoring the throbbing pain in his thigh. He caught up with them on the roof of the hospital. Somehow, they'd picked up an extra passenger on the way up.

"Wilson!"

"House," he replied, and sketched a salute, and then Thirteen grabbed his arm and wrapped it around her neck. "Um... what are you doing?"

"We're about to go flitting," Sasha answered for her, and she grabbed House's arm and did the same to it as Remy had done to Wilson's. She swallowed against the sensation of golden warmth spreading out from where his skin touched her. "Hold on."

And the world began to spin, and then everything went black.

.

Foreman groaned and put a hand to his head, touching blood that had began congealing on his skin. He blinked, and wiggled his fingers and toes. Everything was working. He just had a wicked migraine. And his throat itched. When his scratching fingertips touched the torn flesh there, he winced and jerked his hand away.

"You mortals and your fear of pain."

Foreman turned to stare at the freakish, towering man in the doorway, standing beside a bloody, battered Kutner who lay unconscious on the floor.

"What... what did you do to him?" Foreman demanded.

"I enjoy playing with my food. My sister and I used to have such fun together doing so, until she ran away to human medical school. Unfortunately, I might have broken him. Oh, well." Baring sharp teeth in a ghastly caricature of a smile, the man who'd beaten the living crap out of Foreman took a single step forward when something hit him in the side of the head. Before he could reach down to retrieve the object that had hit him- it looked remarkably like a rock- a shadow flew at him, and he stumbled backwards, tripping over Kutner.

Foreman stared. He had to be hallucinating. Because a tall, slender young woman with a very long, sharp looking knife was standing protectively over Kutner, looking incredibly bored.

"You threw a rock at me!" The sibilant voice snarled in outrage. "How dare you!"

"Did it hurt?" The woman drawled.

"No, but you did not have to-"

"Sasha!" A familiar, womanly voice cried. Foreman blinked as Thirteen ran over to the fallen man- the man who'd been barely seconds away from butchering the two doctors- and knelt down, cradling his head in her arms. "I didn't want you to _hurt_ him!"

"You said, 'Don't let him kill them.' Did he kill them? No, he didn't. He's still alive... erm... relatively speaking. Being _lamia_ has to count for something," the tall woman replied to Thirteen. She had to be Sasha. Shoving jet black hair from her face, she added, "Gimpy, you might want to check on the baby doctor, here." She gently toed Kutner. "I have to make sure I didn't give Baby Brother a boo-boo."

"Shut your mouth, Sasha," the homicidal man snarled. "You stabbed me in the back."

"I didn't hit anything vital, Radu, don't be such a baby," Sasha replied acidly, wiping her knife on a patch of velvet on her micro-mini-skirt and flopping down onto a sofa as House stumped into the room, followed by Wilson. Both men jerked to a halt when their brains caught up with their eyes. Sasha went on, ignoring the humans, "And I can't believe you got distracted by a pitiful little rock."

"Who the hell is she?" Foreman demanded, indicating the reclining Sasha. House shook himself, trying to ignore the sight of Thirteen cradling what looked like a blood-spattered, animated corpse, and went to Foreman, checking his injuries while Wilson checked Kutner for a pulse.

"I'm the bloodsucking bitch who just saved your life by stabbing my brother. Who are you? Oh, and Wilson, don't worry, he still smells alive."

"Smells?" Wilson demanded.

"You know, for someone who wanted to bite me for spilling anything that even smelled like a secret, you're awfully chatty about things like blood sucking, Sasha," Thirteen sniped.

"Bite me," the other woman replied in a sing-song voice.

"Uhn... uhn, what... what the hell?" Kutner mumbled, and tried to sit up. Wilson forced him to lie back down on the floor. Thirteen got up from her place beside the would-be killer and knelt down beside her colleague. "Thirteen... what the hell happened? Where'd you come from? Where's Foreman?"

"I'm right here," the black man mumbled, and sat up, leaning against the wall. He touched his head and winced.

"_You should have let me kill them, Rena!_" The homicidal creature snarled. "You should kill them yourself! You are a member of this family! Kill them! They are a threat! They are trespassing in our father's house, Rena! Kill them! _Rena, kill them!_"

"Shut up, Radu," Sasha drawled, shifting on the sofa. "Not everyone is as homicidally feral as you are. And anyway, we gotta get back to the hospital. I can't afford to leave Eustacia alone for too long."

"You left our sister alone?" The creature, Radu, cried. "You left her unguarded?! Sasha, how could you? You know what is at stake!"

"What the hell is going on?" Foreman demanded.

"Are you telling me you think I can't do my job?" Sasha demanded, surging to her feet. The knife was back in her hand. "Is that what you're saying, Radu? You may be my brother, but I will take _no disrespect-"_

"Sasha!" Thirteen cried, grabbing her arm, but the dark haired woman jerked out of her grasp. "Sasha, stop it, now."

"I am a warrior of the Rampling Family! How dare you insinuate-"

The only thing that stopped her from attacking Radu was House's cane swatting right across her breasts, cutting her off midsentence and leaving a stinging welt. At the sharp, hot pain across her sensitive skin, she drew in a hissing breath and slashed her eyes at him. He stared back at her. She could barely discern his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest, the minute flare of his nostrils, the sound of air brushing past his lips. Her attention was devoured by the burning sapphire gaze pinning her consciousness.

_What are you doing to me?_ She thought softly, sound strangely breathless, though her thoughts didn't need to breathe. _Who are you, really? _Everyone stared at them, holding their collective breath. Even Radu watched with shivering, irrepressible interest.

The knife-edged tension strung out between Sasha and House was broken by Nelly Furtado's _Maneater_ playing on the crippled doctor's cellphone. He grabbed the irritating, electronic device, flipped it open, hit "Send" to activate the conversation, and snarled viciously into the phone, "_What_, _Cuddy?_" The Dean of Medicine shrieked and whimpered by turns into the phone. The only word Sasha could understand was "shoot." As Cuddy continued speaking, House's grip on his cane grew tighter and tighter. Finally, all the doctor muttered tersely into the mouthpiece was, "We're on our way." He closed the phone and gazed at Sasha. Now, his expression was softer, gentler. Then he looked at Thirteen with that same expression. The face he turned to a snarling, growling Radu was one of contempt.

"Why do you stare at me, mortal?" Radu demanded.

"Someone shot up the hospital. Your mom and Marishka are in critical condition. Both were hit in the fire. The police are on their way. Someone told Cuddy they needed Sasha."

The woman in question felt something frigid touch her heart, filling her veins with liquid ice. Her stomach rumbled quietly, and instinctively she tongued her eyeteeth and canines, feeling the thin points sliding further and further out of her gums. She sheathed her knife and glanced at everyone in the room. She winked at Foreman and Kutner, who looked more than a little disturbed at her gesture. Then she looked at House.

"There will be blood," she told him softly. "And plenty of violence. I can get there faster on my own."

"How will we get back to the hospital?" Kutner asked. Sasha ignored him, just kept looking at House.

"My car's in the garage," Remy replied, going back to Radu's side. She pulled him to his feet, dusting him off. "I'll take you back. Sasha, get out of here. Go on. You've got renegades to kill."

Sasha nodded, and turned to leave the room, when House grabbed her arm. She found herself staring into those cobalt eyes again, nearly blinded by the gleaming brilliance of his gaze. She felt almost like she was drowning, but there was plenty of air. She tasted sweetness on the back of her tongue.

"Don't die," House managed to grind out from between clenched teeth.

"Yes, because I can so totally tell you actually mean it," she replied sarcastically, smirking. Sobering, she added, "Don't go into the hospital until I give you the word. Understand? I can't protect you and kill whoever's shooting up the hospital at the same time. You must understand. Do not come into the hospital until I call your phone. Please?"

"Well, well," Radu murmured. "Sasha says please?"

"That word's actually in your vocabulary?" Remy added. "Sasha, go away. Go kill things."

"Shut up, Rena," her sister replied.

"Don't call me-"

"Promise me you won't come into the hospital, dammit!" She cried, grabbing House's cane out of his hands. "I swear I will beat you to death if you don't promise me, right now." She couldn't explain why she was so desperate to keep the obnoxious doctor out of danger, but she knew that if there was a choice between Eustacia, her sister and employer, and House's safety, she'd freeze, and probably get it in the chest with several silver bullets. She had to keep him away.

"I promise," House conceded, sighing.

"Thank you," she replied, and the right corner of her mouth curled up. House's eyes zeroed in on the dimple in her right cheek. "See ya later." And she disappeared- that flitting thing she'd done before. The call came just as Remy was pulling up in front of the hospital, with the four men in her '99 black Toyota Camry. But it wasn't from Sasha.

It was Cuddy. The shooters were dead in the lobby. The police had taken statements from some child patients who'd been saved, as well as Marishka and Lucinda Rampling. They were removing the bodies of the shooters. There were no civilian casualties, and the only injuries were the Rampling women. That was all fine and dandy.

But Sasha was missing.

.

.

.

_So, here's chapter two. I actually managed to churn it out in less than a week. Only because my roommate's going out of town for the week, though, and wasn't on our comp. Anyway, escalating violence, literally. Hope you likey. Reviews? Also, there was a few changes to Chapter One that weren't there before. Hope you enjoyed that, too. And again, I love readers to give me suggestions and such._


	4. 003 The Power of Words

_**A/N:** There is a quick reference glossary to refer back to while reading this chapter at the bottom of the screen._

_Now, on with the show!_

**Chapter Three  
The Power of Words**

* * *

Pandemonium.

House walked into the front lobby of the hospital, the same lobby he entered to get to work every day, with Thirteen and Wilson behind him, supporting Kutner and Foreman, respectively. The place was milling with cops and crime scene investigators, and countless other losers in uniform checking out what had happened at the local teaching hospital when some nuts shot the place up for some random reason that the head diagnostician wouldn't have given a damn about if he didn't have a gargantuan hunch that the hospital shooting had everything to do with his patients, Thirteen, and Sasha.

"Where's Sasha?" House demanded as soon as he saw Cuddy.

"Where's... what the hell happened to these two? They look like they lost a fight with a... a... a doberman or a rottweiler or-"

"My twin brother," Thirteen replied sarcastically, and deposited Foreman on a comfy, electric purple chintz armchair. "He doesn't go for people breaking into our house. He needs his privacy. He's got some problems. Don't we all?" The dark edge to Dr. Hadley's voice made the Dean of Medicine give her a second look. She grinned, and it seemed as if she had more teeth, and bigger teeth, than she ought to have. And for the first time in almost twenty years, she was starving. Ignoring the building hunger, compartmentalizing it so that it was manageable, Thirteen absently patted the dark-skinned doctor's shoulder and then scanned the lobby. "Sasha's not here. I can't smell her, sense her, hear her. Nothing. I can't find her."

"Why didn't I know you had super vampire senses?" House demanded. Cuddy blinked. Remy noticed Kutner and Foreman eyeing her with sudden suspicion. Her boss only looked irritated. He went on, "That kind of trick could probably come in handy in medicine, you know."

"You obviously weren't paying attention to what I was doing just before we left my house," she replied, and just the thought gave her the sensory memory of metallic, copper-sweet blood on the back of her tongue, with a citrus-bitter aftertaste. Her brother's blood. The first taste of Family blood in almost two decades. All she'd needed was a couple drops- she'd gotten a lot more than that- and her powers, weakened by malnutrition until they were almost non-existent, had flared up to life again. Not enough to fix them completely, just enough that she could sense things most people could sense. Everything was 20 times sharper than before, but if she'd had more blood, she could've been back to 100 percent.

She gently pressed the tip of her tongue to the tips of select, incredibly senstive teeth, and found her eyeteeth and incisors much sharper than she remembered from earlier that morning. _Thanks a lot, Radu._

"Obviously I wasn't paying attention to your life story," House snarked back, ignoring the curious look from his boss, Dean of Medicine. "I assumed you were doing what you said you were doing- putting your evil twin back in his cage down in the basement."

"He's not my evil twin, and I had to sedate him first. He was understandably irritated that there were humans on the grounds of our estate. The Rampling Estate of New Jersey is, after all, our family's ancestral home in this country. And the process of subduing a vampire of Radu's strength was strenuous enough that it reawakened my sleeping abilities."

"And why were your abilities 'sleeping,' Dr. Thirteen?" Her boss asked almost acidly.

"I'm suffering from malnutrition," she said brightly, as if commenting about a toddler's birthday party instead of being starved for human blood. "It interferes with many of my genetic talents."

"What does that mean?" Cuddy asked.

"Who cares!" House snarled. "I get it. I understand. Now where the hell is Sasha?! She went in after the shooters, and now she's missing. Where _is_ she?"

"She's around here somewhere," Remy replied, shivering and rubbing her arms against the sudden chill. Another side-effect of tasting the sweet crimson of undeath and getting her powers back, was a sudden, drastic decrease in her body's core temperature. Unless she fed normally, or unless she went back to abstaining and returned to a mostly bloodless diet, the temp change would be permanent. Curse of the undead- the chills.

"I don't see her anywhere," House snapped.

"Why do you care so much?" Foreman demanded as a nurse came up to him with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a wet cloth. She began cleaning the ragged but shallow wound in his neck.

Remy could tell by the way he winced and jerked away from the nurse's touch that the wound still hurt, which also told her Radu was deliberately being cruel, trying to torment the doctor. Vampire saliva had a conscious numbing agent in it. He ought to have used it, and hadn't. She shuddered, this time not from the cold. Why was her twin such a sadistic freak? How could he be such a monster to everyone else, and so gentle and protective towards their family and Remy herself?

_And how can you justify calling your only blood relation a freak?_

_Oh,_ she replied caustically, _heard that, did you? You tried to eat my coworkers. I have the right to call you a freak for that._

"I'm going to look for her," House snapped, breaking Dr. Hadley's reverie, and began stumping towards the elevators when Remy suddenly cried, "I got it! Eustacia's room! She ought to be in Eustacia's room. If she'd defeated every enemy in the hospital, she'd go back to guarding our sister."

House was already in the elevator, and the doors were sliding shut.

* * *

Cold.

Everything icy cold. It ate at Sasha's gray flesh, nipped at her face, nibbled at her fingertips, gnawed at her bones, and did everything in its power to devour her alive. So cold was she, that she could barely trudge down the hall, leaning heavily against the wall in case she should collapse into a heap of bloodless, exhausted vampire.

Strange... the walls had been so cold before when she'd prowled the halls searching for the gunmen attacking the hospital. Now the tiles felt almost hot against the skin of her palms. Her stomach was cramping violently, red hot pain stabbing into her belly, and her teeth and jaw ached. Her lip bled where her fangs cut into the soft flesh.

In the back of her mind, she realized that the heat of the tiles meant her body temperature was desperately low. The pain was a sharp reminder that she was starving, and injured. Sasha shuddered, though she couldn't discern the actual movement because of how wracked she was with the violent cold chewing at every nerve ending. She was too close, she realized. Too close to turning. She was almost a _lilim_ now, not quite a _revenant_ but too close to the building agony of thirst to be safe around anyone for long unless she found a living, human anchor. An old soul, her _auramdas. _She whimpered as sharp pain lanced her temples. Her skin itched, and she noticed it had begun peeling, as if from sunburn.

She didn't have a lot of time to make it back to Eustacia's room, didn't have a lot of time to get blood from Rena or someone else who knew her Family.

In her mind, she saw piercing, cobalt eyes, cold with intellect and blazing with something she'd never seen in a human before. She wanted to find them, those eyes. She could scarcely remember where she had seen those beautiful eyes, but it didn't matter. She would find them, and when she found them, the thirst would be gone.

The thirst, the cold, the pain- it would all disappear, as soon as she found those eyes.

* * *

Dr. Hadley caught up with House in Eustacia's room. He was clutching his cane and staring at the clock on the wall, hunched up almost defensively in a hard-backed, crappy chair beside the unconscious Eustacia's hospital bed. In two other beds in the high-profile, luxury hospital room were the women known as Lucinda and Marishka Rampling, Dr. Hadley's foster mother and sister.

Lucinda slept, the golden glow of the almost-sunset dusting her cheeks.

Marishka watched the clock, her amber eyes zeroing in on the ticking hands. She nibbled on her bottom lip, ignoring the itch of lengthening teeth.

"She's not here," House snapped the moment Remy walked in the door. She knew who he meant- Sasha.

The woman ignored him, only looked at her sister, Marishka, sitting up in her hospital bed, continuously brushing back the wavy, golden locks hanging in front of her eyes. Mari had the worst case of bed hair Thirteen had ever seen. Short and slender to the point of being petite, the young woman was swamped in the hospital gown she wore. She looked like a child playing dress up. It almost made Remy want to smile. But she was busy observing. Her sister's gaze wasn't fixed on the clock, as Remy had firstly assumed. The golden gaze flicked between the clock and the turn at the end of the hall, off to the left.

Sasha was on her way.

* * *

Heat.

Not just warmth, golden and syrup sweet against her skin. Not just heat, like a roaring fire. This was sun-blazing wildfire, raging hellish inferno, melting the ice in her veins. She could feel warmth coming back to the tip of her nose, to her fingertips, to her toes. All because she was crawling closer and closer to those beautiful, sea blue eyes. They called to her, beckoned like a fire in the night. They promised safety, warmth, peace. Everything she needed right now.

But she wasn't quite sure she could make it.

She was still bleeding from the gunshot wounds in her right thigh, knee, shoulder, and side. She'd been sneak attacked with silver buckshot in the back, barely able to duck out of the way in time to keep the deadly pellets from getting her in the head when her attacker had been betrayed by the harsh, earthquake sound of a chambering round in his shotgun. She'd also taken a chip of silver in the chest from a hollow-point round that had shattered on the wall, and the silver piece burned as it sank acid-like through the layers of flesh on its wormy way to her heart. She needed to get that piece of silver out before it found its way to an artery. If it was in her heart, that was okay. Something that small, there would be no lasting damage once she found it. But if it got to an artery, it would make its way to her brain, and she'd be dead in seconds, especially in her weakened, almost _revenant_ condition.

_Saaaaaashaaaaaaa..._

She heard the voice in her mind, and more heat flowed back into her limbs as she forcibly pulled herself forward, her still icy body dragging on the hot tile floor like so much meat. It was a calling, a summoning from far off and yet close by, tasting of the electric blue vanilla sweetness of the subconscious. Her own bloodloss was distorting her senses. How much of her blood was on this floor? Sprinkled scarlet rain drops? Anorexically thin, crimson rivulets? Gushing, burgundy rivers like spilled wine? She was bleeding out from a nick in her femoral artery. Surely there were rivers of crimson blood upon the floor.

Suddenly, she choked on something thick, slimy, and cold in her throat, sludging into her mouth like toxic waste. Hacking and coughing, she spat out a giant glob of coagulated blood. That piece of silver was burning its way into her lungs. Already, things were beginning to swim across her eyes.

She took a gasping, shuddering breath, and another. Her eyes burned as the tiled-glare from the overhead lights intensified to the point of lancing agony. She squeezed her eyes shut as she struggled onward.

_Auramdas..._

Sasha managed to force the word into her mind, sounding almost plaintive, desperate, though she didn't know why. Such an old, old word. Positively ancient. Still capable of stirring the deepest feelings in any vampire. Still capable of urging a dying bloodsucker onward in the hopes of finding that person so she could be anchored to this world, unable to slip away into death because of a few gunshot wounds and some poisonous silver rounds. That was the power of that word, the idea behind it, the power of the connection it gave birth to. The word gave her strength, because the connection behind it was drawing her onward towards her sister's room.

_Why am I thinking about crap like soulmates at a time like this? _Sasha asked herself disjointedly, almost angrily, her fingers scrabbling for purchase on the slick floor. _I haven't even met any new vampires and there sure as hell aren't any in the hospital that aren't related to me and damn! That hurts,_ she thought as a hunger pain slashed through her belly. Her fangs sank into her lip.

She heard the sound of voices, and opened her eyes.

* * *

House slowly rose to his feet, agonizing white pain shooting up his thight and down to his knee. He gripped his cane tightly in his right hand. Clenching his teeth in a grimace, he stumped towards the door to the patients' room. He could feel her, a calling, a summoning... She was so close to that bend in the wall of the corridor, so close to turning round that corner. But there was such pain in her. He could feel it, practically taste it.

"House!"

He turned his head slowly to see Cuddy, trailed by Cameron and Wilson, striding toward him. The Dean of Medicine's face blanched when she caught sight of her employee, but she and her two other doctors approached the wild-eyed diagnostician.

"What?" He demanded, jerking his head to look in the other direction. He tensed, scanning the hallway for any sign of Sasha. He could _feel_ her approaching, slowly, like the tide. Why? How could he feel her very presence, like the light of the sun on his skin? Unless he was hallucinating... Was this just some delusion, sucking at his mind as he staggered through the hospital? Or was it the power of his own deductive reasoning?

"House, what is going on?" Cuddy demanded, staring at him intently.

"Ask Thirteen."

"I'm asking _you_!"

He ignored her, his eyes boring holes in the wall as he continued to study the hallway. He knew she was coming. Where was she? Why was the pain lancing through his leg sharpening, burning, blazing? What was going on here?

_Sasha, where are you?_

If he didn't find her soon, if she didn't come to him soon, she would die. There was too much pain for her not to die. Her body would shut down, her brain would destroy itself, even if there was nothing physically wrong with her. He didn't know how he knew it, but she would die without medical attention.

_Auramdas..._

The word whispered through his mind. It shivered across his flesh, breathed against the inside of his skull. It seared his veins, burned at the tip of each nerve ending. What did that word mean? He knew he'd heard it somewhere, read it somewhere, something, but it stirred something like sweet pain in his chest and agonizing fire in his leg.

And he saw it. The sign he'd been waiting for. An ivory pale, blood speckled hand falling to the cool tile floor just beyond the left turn of the hallway. That hand, and the wrist attached to it, lay limp upon the floor.

He lurched forward, yelling, "Sasha!"

* * *

Strength.

She could feel it in the thundering of his heart against the wall of his chest, the chest that cushioned her head as he held her in his arms. She could feel strength in the way the muscles of his arms and shoulders tightened with the strain of holding her aloft. She could feel it in the steady, throbbing pulse of blood through his body. She could taste it on the skin of his neck as her lips brushed against it. She couldn't help herself- she could barely breathe, much less move her head away.

"Sasha, stay with me." His voice was deep and gentle, but urgent. She'd do anything for that voice, even kill. She'd stay with him. Of course she would. Always. Forever. Of course.... "Sasha!"

She looked up into eyes like a blue sea softened and glamourized by pearl grey mists. Those eyes... she'd found them.

She tried to smile, the right corner of her mouth curling a little.

_Auramdas?_ His voice in her mind, his thoughts breathing the word inside her brain, making her shiver. Her eyes locked on his, and this time it was she who breathed softly, gently into the warmth of his so-human mind, _Auramdas_.

The diagnostician stared at her, unable to look away from that pale face flecked with bits of dried, maroon blood. There was a smudge of brown where he'd seen that dimple in her right cheek. He could see the tell-tale teeth in her mouth now, teeth that were much more pronounced than any of the times she'd flashed him that feral grin. Again, he heard her whisper, the word resounding in his head, filled with certainty, _Auramdas._

He didn't know what the word meant, but hearing it eased the burning in his muscles, the shooting pain in his thigh. It softed the hard ache beginning in his back. House had no idea the little bodyguard was so damn heavy!

_I heard that,_ she mumbled in his head.

"Yeah, well, you _could_ stand to lose a few pounds," he replied as he made it back into the recently vacated room. Wilson took Sasha from the limping doctor, who added, "Next time, do what I say. Try _not_ to die."

"Everybody's a critic," she murmured, struggling to draw breath. And in his mind, she whispered one more time, _Auramdas._

_Auramdas? What does that even mean?_

She smiled, both corners of her mouth quirking.

_Soulmate._

* * *

Here ends Chapter Three of _Suck._

* * *

_So, here's chapter three. First violence, now romance. I love those romance novels about soulmates, like Christine Feehan's _Dark Series_ and LJ Smith's _Nightworld _books. So, anyway, I had created this vampire universe for another fic (anime) but I liked the history, language, and culture I had created, so I figured I could do a non-anime fic in that same vampire-world. _

_Which means, among other things, that Cameron is hiding a secret and** NO** it is **NOT** that she's a vampire. Cameron is **NOT** a vampire. _

_Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Chapter four won't come for a while cuz I'm going out of town._

_I just discovered this amazing trick of using these long lines across the page instead of the centered periods I'd been using so I'm going to be remodeling most of my stories in the next few weeks, just an FYI._

_Reviews?_

_

* * *

_

**GLOSSARY**

_Quick reference glossary to refer back to while reading this chapter:_

**auramdas-** the Sanguinyte word for "soulmate." Unlike in human culture, _vampires_ need their soulmates in order to survive. A soulmate anchors a _vampire_ to sanity and the living world, helping prevent them from degenerating into other subspecies of _vampire_ such as_ lilim, nosferatu, fiend_, or _revenant_. Once soulmates discover each other, a psychic connection begins to form between them, even if it unconsciously. A _vampire_ can be soulmate to any other preternatural species, _including humans._ If one's soulmate is killed, a _vampire_ will go mad with grief.

**lamia- **a _vampire_ that is _born_, not made. This type of _vampire_ ages, though much more slowly than a human would. It can take up to 200 years for a _lamia_ to reach full maturity. Somewhat like puberty in humans, the speed at which a _vampire_ "grows up" is different for each bloodsucker. _Lamia_ carry a genetic allergy to lemons.

**lilim-** an emaciated corpse-like state where the _vampire_ is feral, starving for blood and in agonizing pain. The madness brought on by this state is reversible. A _lilim_ is controllable only by its master, its _auramdas_, or someone strongly bonded to them, such as a sibling, child, or parent. The curses of vampirism are much stronger in the _lilim_- they blister in the sun, they ache with cold, and all sensations (like pain and hunger) are magnified a thousand times.

**revenant-** a state much like the _lilim_, but the madness cannot be reversed. A _revenant_ must be slain, or it will either starve to death due to capture and confinement or slaughter countless humans until it dies. They are strongly affected by the curses of vampirism- they catch fire in the weakest sunlight, they are mad with hunger, their flesh blisters and melts when in contact with silver and certain sacred types of woods, and garlic repels them. It should be noted that **ONLY** _revenants_ are affected by garlic.

**Sanguinyte-** the Vampiric language (_**a/n**- I came up with it on my own. it's copyrighted by me as of 2002_).


	5. 004 Black and White

_**A/N:** There is a quick reference glossary to refer back to while reading this chapter at the bottom of the screen._

_Now, on with the show!_

**Chapter Four  
Black and White**

* * *

White.

She was so very white, practically bloodless against the blackness of the sheets, the ebony satin of the nightgown her family had brought from their home, the sable spider silk of her long, black hair falling loose around her shoulders. It was like looking at skimmed milk spilled on black marble. She was almost not there, so translucent was her ivory skin. If he blinked, she would disappear, vanish without a trace. She would shatter into a thousand porcelain atoms, invisible, intangible, drifting off into space. How could anyone be so thin and pale and evanescent? The ice blue ribbons of her veins were like smudges and shadows against the whiteness of her flesh.

"House?" Cuddy asked softly. She touched his arm.

He twitched out from beneath her touch, ignoring his boss in exchange for focusing on the still, silent form of Sasha Rampling unconscious on the hospital bed before him. She was swathed in stark, white bandages that seemed dingy compared to the creamy pallor of her skin. House's eyes ached from staring at the stark crimson bleeding into the gauze. The bleeding wouldn't stop. They'd given her desmopressin to get her blood vessels to clot properly, but still the blood flowed like wine from her wounds.

"House!"

"Shut up!" He growled at Cuddy, ignoring the way she watched him with wary, wounded eyes. After all, it had been Cuddy who had tasted House's most recent kiss, tasted the pain and life behind it. But he would rage at her, shove her away, for the woman on that bed. For a woman he didn't even know. How could he switch his affections so quickly?

"House," Foreman interrupted, trying to ignore the way Cuddy's eyes darkened and gleamed. Was she going to cry? "You can't afford to ignore your cases because some woman you barely know is in our ICU."

"Go to hell," he snarled.

"House?" Those newer, dulcet tones belonged to a different doctor: Dr. Allison Cameron. He didn't want to talk to her, either. He didn't want to talk to anyone. He needed to think. What could account for Sasha bleeding out this way? "House!" Cameron said sharply. Her voice scraped his ears.

"I'm busy," he snapped.

Sasha couldn't be a hemophiliac. That only afflicted men. Women could _carry_ the disease, but only _men_ were affected by it. He bit his lip, thinking quickly, as quick as he dared for fear of missing something, making a mistake.

Then he said, "Thirteen, Taub, Kutner, Foreman. I want you to test for Glanzmann's Thrombasthenia, HUS, Bernard-Soulier Syndrome- all three types, DIC, Gray Platelet Syndrome, Von Willebrand Disease, Delta Storage Pool Deficiency, and HIT. Give her Tranexamic acid for the bleeding. Obviously the desmopressin isn't working." Still ticking off possible diagnosis, he wondered, _Could it be cancer? No, Thirteen would've said something. Unless she didn't know._ Aloud he added, "And get me a bone marrow biopsy. Check for cancer."

"Can't be Delta Storage, she's got black hair," Taub contradicted.

"So?" House demanded.

"_So, _Delta Storage causes albinism, which means her hair would be white or blond."

"Could be a dye job."

"She has green eyes! Albinos have gray, blue, or pink eyes!" The ex-plastic surgeon insisted.

"Could be contacts. Look at her, she's paler than the bandages!"

"She doesn't wear contacts," Thirteen broke in, ignoring everyone's confused looks and House's burning glare. Oh, if looks could kill, she'd have been pushing up daisies already. Ignoring the way people stared at House and the way House stared at her, she continued, "I was there when Sasha was adopted. She was only a few weeks old and she already had black hair and green eyes."

"Fine," House snarled, "It's not Delta Storage. Run the other tests."

"Can't be HIT," Kutner added. "We didn't give her any medications and Thirteen said she's allergic to heparin. If this was HIT, she'd be dead by now from asphyxiation caused by an allergic reaction."

House latched onto that piece of information like a starving lamprey and rounded on the exhausted, pale looking female doctor on his team. Thinking quickly, biting his tongue to make sure it remained civil, he asked the bisexual, "Sasha's allergic to heparin?" Thirteen nodded. "I thought vampires were allergic to silver, wood, and garlic." The woman shook her head.

"We're not allergic to garlic per se, but lamia can be born with allergies to anything. Marishka's allergic to peanuts and my mother is allergic to AB- blood. Sasha's allergic to heparin."

"So it's not HIT. Do the tests, minus HIT and Delta."

"Can't be Gray-Platelet Syndrome," Thirteen added. "That's genetic. Sasha's parents didn't have it."

"But they might have been carriers," House reminded her.

"Couldn't have been," she said. "Her parents were _Moroi_." Seeing the looks of confusion on her colleagues' faces, she elaborated, "They became vampires because of exposure to vampire blood and not through a bite or by being born. Vampire blood, when introduced into the body in injections into the brain stem, heart, spinal column, and ovaries or testicles warps human DNA, purging the body and the human genome of all impurities. Any genetic defects they might have had were purged when they were transformed."

For a long moment, no one said anything. Then House muttered, "Right," and sighed. "Anything else it can't be due to vampire biology?"

"House," Taub interjected. "Vampires? Why do you keep bringing up vampires?"

"Oh, _sorry_," the head diagnostician muttered sarcastically. "Forgot to fill you in. Kutner and Foreman went to Thirteen's house- house, not apartment- and were attacked by her psychotic bloodsucking twin brother. Turns out, the Rampling-Hadley family are a bunch of _vampires_. So, now we're dealing with entirely new creatures, which means we need a vampire doctor to help us out. Or, since there apparently _are_ no vampire doctors, we have a regular vampire, instead, though it's an itty bitty one, from what I understand, " he added, glaring at Thirteen.

She glared right back.

"It can't be Von Willebrand Disease. That's hereditary. It can't be DIC, she's not bleeding internally. If she was, she'd be shrinking," Thirteen said.

"I'm sorry," Foreman interrupted. "Did you say _shrinking_?"

"Have you ever seen what the embalmed corpse of a hundred-and-ten-year-old woman looks like after it's been in the ground a few months versus what I or Dr. Cameron look like?" Remy asked. "Sunken, gray, on its way to mummification. With as much blood as she's lost, and as much blood as she's losing from these wounds now, if she were bleeding internally she'd start aging, start mummifying. It's our bodies' attempt to constrict blood flow so we _stop_ bleeding. Her body doesn't think it's necessary yet."

"But couldn't that be because we're pumping her full of O-Neg?" Cuddy asked.

"No. Human blood wouldn't stop it quickly enough. Digestion takes time."

"That also rules out Bernard-Soulier Syndrome," House muttered, and slammed his fist down on a table. "Dammit! What could it be?! If we don't stop the bleeding, she's going to die!"

"It's not HUS," Thirteen informed him. "No microangiopathic hemolytic anemia. She's as anemic as she's supposed to be because we're vampires. If it was worse than that, her body would start shutting down and mummifying. No mummification. And she's not having kidney failure, either."

"How do you know _that_?" Taub asked.

"If there were blood in her urine, I'd be able to smell it, and I can't. I can smell everything else about this room- it's driving me crazy- down to what perfume the nurse was wearing who wrapped the bandages."

"And there's no urine-mixed-with-blood smell?"

"No. No elevated calcium or phosphate, either," Remy added. "And it's not ITP. No perpura... oh, my God."

She shoved everyone out of the way and lunged to Sasha's bedside. Bringing her nose down to the bandage around Sasha's neck, already pregnant with blood, she inhaled deeply, sharply. Her nose twitched, and her brain buzzed. It had been a long time since Remy had had full access to her powers. Now, it was hard to control her senses. She had always been good at blocking out unwanted noise, so hearing wasn't a problem. She didn't open her mouth very often, so tasting the air didn't plague her now. Her acute sense of touch had never diminished, despite the suppression of her powers. Her sight, also, had remained the same. But smell... it was work to sift through the overpowering stench of disinfectant and latex and plastic, the ocean-brine punch of saline and the salt-sweet perfume of blood that threatened to choke her. She could feel her teeth lengthening the more she sniffed at Sasha's blood-drenched bandages. A single drop of blood oozed from the crimson bandage and trickled down the swan white collumn of her throat.

"What is it?" House demanded.

Remy shushed him. Her nose was starting to itch.

She inhaled again, filling her lungs with oxygen. The rush of air made her head feel light. A tingling began in the tip of her nose. She drew in another scenting breath through her nostrils. Blood, so much blood, like raw steak and ground beef and slaughtered livestock and burgundy wine. But she had to scent past it, had to find the smell she was looking for. Inhale one more time.

A burning stench hit her nose through the perfume of blood. An agonizing stab of pain shot up her nose, and blood began to gush from the abused appendage. She shoved her sleeve against her bleeding nose, staunching the flow of blood with the sleeve of her lab coat.

"Dr. Hadley!" Cuddy cried.

"The bullets!" She tried to shrug out of her lab coat without taking her wrist away from her nostrils. "They didn't take them out, did they?" She was looking at Cameron, who ought to know the answer because she'd been in the OR with Dr. Chase. The blonde woman shook her head and Remy snarled, "Damn! We need to get them out."

"Why? They stitched her closed and everything was fine," Cameron replied.

"The bullets are made out of silver. Get them out or she'll bleed to death. She might have a seizure if even a microscopic piece makes its way into an artery and up into her brain! Come on!"

With a mewling cry, almost a whimper, Sasha began siezing.

* * *

Black.

Everything was pitch black, darker than midnight beneath the deepest seas. Storm black clouds roiled behind her eyes, blotting out the light trying to filter weakly through her eyelids. Everything was blackness, shadows and deeper shadows and the void and there was nothing there except the midnight darkness. She was swimming through velvet blackness, smothered by the silken shadows. She could barely draw breath, barely take one shuddering, terrified gasp after another.

Something tingled in the back of her head, like pins and needles piercing her brainstem, like her nervous system was going numb. But in that white, ether-like numbness was a blazing hot, cherry red point of pain swimming up the contours of her back and into the twisted, electrical braids of her spinal collumn. It sang, a melody of burning pain, squirming like shards of white hot glass as it twisted up and up into her mind.

_Sasha...._

The voice that whispered into her mind, breathing her name soft as a silk caress, was so familiar, so special. Something in that voice soothed the burning pain, blanketed that crimson needle prick of pain with soothing silk shadows. There was a sorrowing darkness in that voice that breathed peace against her pain.

_Sasha, stop moving, you've got to stop moving...._

But she wasn't moving. She wasn't doing anything, she was just floating, floating like a corpse in a river. How many corpses had she seen floating in the waters of how many rivers? Was that why she was trapped in darkness now? Because of all the things she had done to others? Because of the lives she had taken, to survive, to protect? Was that such a bad thing, that she had killed those who would kill her and her loved ones?

_Sasha, stop moving, or the MRI won't work!_

But she wasn't moving! She was still as death, silent and immovable. And yet why....

She took as deep a breath as she could, shuddering and gasping and desperate, and tried to focus on something other than that stabbing, burning pain in her spine, at the nape of her neck. She focused instead on her body, what she could feel of it. She cast her awareness from the tips of her icy toes to her fingertips and throughout her body. Her entire body shook and shivered. She hadn't noticed with that shrieking pain.

_Sasha, hold still, dammit!_

_I can't!_ She screamed back at him. _It hurts! Help me! Help... help me... Gregory...._

She wanted to see his face, wanted to see his bright blue eyes with that soft, so tender look in their depths, wanted to see that sarcastic quirk to his lips as he grinned at her.

_I'm not grinning. Hold still._

_You're cute when you're lying,_ she whispered silently. _You're grinning because you can hear my thoughts._

_And somehow, you're aware of me talking out loud even though you're in the middle of a seizure._

As he continued speaking, the silken shadows of his voice, velvet darkness encrusted with frost so cool against the burning, swathed that path of crimson pain and dulled the agony in her nervous system. Distantly, as if from far, far away, she felt warm fingers wrap around her ice cold hand and squeeze. Living heat suffused her death chilled hands.

_What is happening to me?_ Sasha asked softly when she realized she couldn't squeeze that warm, so alive hand in return. _Why can't I move?_

_You're having a seizure._

_Vampires don't _have_ seizures. Why can't I move?_

_Thirteen says there's a piece of silver in your brain somewhere. It's eating away at your grey matter. We're going to get it out._

_How? _She asked, trying to bite back the shuddering panic suddenly coursing through her veins. Everything tasted so sharp and metalic, it was like her entire mouth was oozing blood. Had she bitten her tongue? _You don't have time to do surgery. I've got a couple minutes, if that._ Her brain would be smoldering ashes in her skull quickly after that. Softly, gently, she added, _And I've only just now found you. I'm going to die, and I've never even-_

_You're not gonna die, all right? Shut up! Hold on!_

She tried to smile, to reassure him. She could taste the bitter desperation in his voice. But she couldn't force her mouth to move. She was paralyzed in the ice cold, clutching blackness.

* * *

Here ends Chapter Four of _Suck._

* * *

_So, this turned out to be a very House-esque chapter, with the differential diagnosis and all. I did my best. I wanted to give some breathing room because soon the action will pick up. So here's a chance for the romance part to grow. _

_Reviews?_

* * *

**GLOSSARY**

_Quick reference glossary to refer back to while reading this chapter:_

**Aminocaproic Acid:** a procoagulant, a chemical that can cause clotting and thus help stop bleeding.

**Bernard-Soulier Syndrome:** an autosomal recessive bleeding disorder that causes a deficiency of _glycoprotein, _the receptor for von Willebrand factor, which is important in clot formation. It is a Giant Platelet Syndrome that is characterized by abnormally large platelets.

**Biopsy**: a medical test involving the removal of cells or tissues for examination.

**Cancer:** a class of diseases in which a group of cells display _uncontrolled growth_ (division beyond the normal limits), _invasion_ (intrusion on and destruction of adjacent tissues), and sometimes _metastasis_ (spread to other locations in the body via lymph or blood).

**Cryoprecipitate:** a procoagulant, a chemical that can cause clotting and thus help stop bleeding.

**Delta Storage Pool Deficiency:** a rare autosomal recessive[1] disorder which results in oculocutaneous albinism (decreased pigmentation), bleeding problems due to a platelet abnormality (platelet storage pool defect), and storage of an abnormal fat-protein compound (lysosomal accumulation of ceroid lipofuscin). There are eight classic forms of the disorder, based on the genetic mutation from which the disorder stems. Called "Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome" or HPS.

**Desmopressin:** a procoagulant, a chemical that can cause clotting and thus help stop bleeding.

**DIC:** Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), also known as consumptive coagulopathy, is a pathological activation of coagulation (blood clotting) mechanisms that happens in response to a variety of diseases. As its name suggests, it leads to the formation of small blood clots inside the blood vessels throughout the body.[1] As the small clots consume all the available coagulation proteins and platelets, normal coagulation is disrupted and abnormal bleeding occurs from the skin (e.g. from sites where blood samples were taken), the digestive tract, the respiratory tract and surgical wounds. The small clots also disrupt normal blood flow to organs (such as the kidneys), which may malfunction as a result.[2]

**Glansmann's Thrombasthenia:** an extremely rare blood disorder in which bleeding time is significantly prolonged due to lack of a protein called _glycoprotien_ in platelets.

**Gray Platelet Syndrome:** a rare congenital bleeding disorder caused by a reduction or absence of the platelet alpha-granules in blood platelets, or of the proteins contained in these granules.

**HIT:** Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia is thrombocytopenia (low platelet counts) due to the administration of heparin. While it is mainly associated with unfractionated heparin (UFH), it can also occur with exposure to low-molecular weight heparin (LMWH), but at significantly lower rates.

**HUS:** Hemolytic-Uremic Syndrome is a disease characterized by microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, acute renal failure and a low platelet count (thrombocytopenia).hemolytic-uremic syndrome (or haemolytic-uraemic syndrome, abbreviated HUS) is a disease characterized by microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, acute renal failure and a low platelet count (thrombocytopenia).

**ICU:** Intensive Care Unit

**ITP:** Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) is the condition of having a low platelet count (thrombocytopenia) of no known cause (idiopathic). As most causes appear to be related to antibodies against platelets, it is also known as immune-mediated thrombocytopenic purpura. Although most cases are asymptomatic, very low platelet counts can lead to a bleeding diathesis and purpura.

**Moroi:** Vampires that are made, not born. The only difference between moroi and lamia is that moroi cannot become afflicted with the three deadliest of vampire diseases: Brymstock Syndrome, Vlad's Syndrome, and Sapientiasis Disease.

**Prothrombin Compex Concentrate (PCC):** a procoagulant, a chemical that can cause clotting and thus help stop bleeding.

**Tranexamic acid:** a procoagulant, a chemical that can cause clotting and thus help stop bleeding.

**Von Willebrand Disease:** the most common hereditary coagulation abnormality described in humans, although it can also be acquired as a result of other medical conditions. It arises from a qualitative or quantitative deficiency of von Willebrand factor (vWF), a multimeric protein that is required for platelet adhesion. It is known to affect humans and dogs. There are four types of hereditary vWD. Other factors including ABO blood groups may also play a part in the severity of the condition.


	6. 005 Threat

**__**

A/N: I thought I mentioned this, but I might not have. Sasha, Eustacia, Marishka, and Thirteen are foster sisters. Lucinda is their foster mother. Only Marishka and Eustacia are biologically related to Lucinda. Most of Lucinda's children are fosterlings.

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Chapter Five  
Threat

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"You broke another MRI?" Cuddy demanded. When House didn't answer, she smacked her palm down on the top of her desk, catching his attention. He arched one eyebrow in inquiry. Cuddy felt something close to rage pricking at the back of her eyes and clawing at her throat as she looked into House's blazing blue eyes. How could he just sit there and act like nothing out of the ordinary was happening? "Darn it, House, we can't afford to destroy our expensive equipment on a whim! What were you thinking? Why would you put that girl into a magnetic machine that would rip fragments of jagged metal out of her head?"

"She was seizing," Talb protested on his boss's behalf. The ex-plastic surgeon glanced over his shoulder to see the other doctors of his team watching through the office windows. He looked back at his boss's boss, and then glanced at House. The head diagnostician nodded for him to continue. "She was seizing, and Thirteen told us to stick her in the MRI. We used it to remove the cause of the seizure and then gave the patient a massive blood transfusion. She's on the mend already."

"On the mend already? What, she's not brain dead from having her grey matter shredded by shrapnel? What in the name of all things holy were you thinking? What possessed you to treat a patient with something that would leave her a vegetable?" Cuddy demanded.

"It wouldn't leave me brain dead," a soft voice murmured. "But your concern is noted and appreciated. Now stop yelling at my _auramdas._"

Talb turned to see Sasha Rampling leaning on Kutner's shoulder, gasping for breath. The bandage wrapped around her head where the bullets had rocketed out of her skull were pure white against the blackness of her hair, but stained red in places. She was swamped in a huge, black, terry cloth robe, her tiny feet encased in black slippers. She looked so small, Talb thought. How had she survived the multiple gunshots? She looked positively frail in that huge bathrobe, but Thirteen claimed she was the best warrior the Rampling-Hadley family could boast. This tiny, childlike, pixie-faced woman was supposed to be the strongest, the bravest, the fiercest vampire that Thirteen had ever met. And she had survived being shot repeatedly, thrown around, and then having shrapnel sucked out of her brain.

"What are you doing out of bed?" House exclaimed and rushed to take the woman from the young doctor. Sasha rested her forehead against House's chest. The blue-eyed man walked her to a chair and forced her to take a seat. "Are you stupid? We just ripped shrapnel out of your brain."

"Yes you did."

"Are you stupid?" He repeated.

"I'll live, Gregory," she replied, and smiled wearily before looking at Cuddy. "Dr. Cuddy, I found the men who shot up your hospital. I handled it. They're dead - no problems there. But you're going to be dealing with more attacks as long as my family is here in your hospital. Are you up for that?" Sasha propped her chin on her fist, and leaned forward. Cuddy found herself transfixed by those glass green eyes. House let his eyes wander for just a moment to the gaping neckline of that huge bathrobe before jerking his eyes back up to Sasha's face. The vampire smirked at him before returning her focus to Cuddy.

"You killed those men?" Cuddy whispered, horror stricken.

"Killed who? The shooters? You killed the shooters? Are you insane!?"

House turned to see Foreman standing in the doorway. Behind him stood Chase, Cameron, Kutner, and Thirteen. Sasha got to her feet and turned to them, took a step forward. Immediately, House was on his feet, clutching his cane in one hand. The dark haired girl cast a quick glance at the white-knuckled grip the doctor had on the cane before looking back at Foreman. There was something dark in her expression. She shrugged out of the bathrobe, and House saw, to his shock, that she was back in her street clothes, although these were looser on her body than the ones before. Now she wore tight, black jazz pants and a black T-shirt with some kind of fairy on it. She still looked incredibly small and childlike, but there was something in her expression that chilled Foreman to the bone. House tightened his grip on his cane. He wanted to say something, stop her from doing whatever she was about to do, but stopped himself at the last minute. Sasha went right up to the black doctor and hissed.

"Whoa," he cried.

"Do not question what I do in defense of my family. I'm willing to kill anyone and anything that tries to hurt the people I love. That includes my parents, my brothers and sisters," here she gestured to Thirteen, "and of course, Gregory. You would do well to take that into consideration when you speak to me, human."

"Someone's cranky," House muttered.

He hoped he was reading her properly. She was angry because of everything that had happened, angry because of her injuries and… and what else? There was something else she was furious about. She was fairly shaking with rage at the thought that somehow, because she hadn't been taking care of him, he had… he had been injured. In his desperation to find her, he'd strained his leg. Now it was shooting lances of white hot agony from ankle to hip. She could sense that, and it was pissing her off.

Sasha turned to Gregory, and her glass green eyes narrowed dangerously. She could see him standing there, shaking with pain as his leg threatened to give out. She almost wanted to bite him. He was being stubborn now, hurting himself to distract her. The hunter bared her teeth in something that could've almost been a smile if it weren't for the freakishly long incisors pressing into her bottom lip. She knew what the length of her teeth meant - she was starving. And she was pissed. She walked over to him, and neither of them knew what she meant to do when she touched the rough stubble of his cheek. Part of her wanted to shred him. Part of her wanted to collapse into his arms and just relax, breathe, let the fight fly past her. She was so tired, so hungry….

She pressed her face into the crook of his neck, listening to the rushing tide of blood ebbing and waxing, pulsing through his body with every thundering beat of his heart. Oh, his heart, pumping hard in his chest as her breasts in their tight black cotton shirt brushed against him. Her lips whispered over the artery in his neck. He was so warm. The heat of his body nearly scorched her as she pressed against him. She wanted that heat, wanted to crawl inside of it and luxuriate in it. She was so cold, and he burned with such fire. And he smelled so… oh so good. It made her shudder when she caught a whiff of him. Old Spice aftershave, AXE shower gel, sweat and blood, lust and a little fear, pain and Vicodin… Vicodin?

Sasha jerked away from him, gasping for breath suddenly. Her head ached abominably, but not from the gunshot wounds. No, it was her hunger. It beat at her, raked and clawed at her like a thousand knives. She drew in breath after shuddering breath, gulping for air, and sank back down into her seat.

House dropped down to one knee next to her, examining her face. Her lips weren't cyanotic, not yet, but if she didn't stop hyperventilating, she might do serious damage. He had no idea what he was working with, so he had no choice but to treat her as a human. He touched her fingers, saw the bluish tinge to the slender digits. She was so pale, and her hands were like ice. He chafed her hands, trying to bring warmth into them.

"I need access to your blood bank," she wheezed, and looked away from him. She turned to Cuddy. "Very dangerous people will be coming to your hospital very soon. I suggest you let me handle them my way. Otherwise, innocent people might die. We don't want that, do we? And I need to hit the blood bank. Okay?"

"The blood bank?" Chase demanded. "What, are you crazy? We need that blood for our patients."

Sasha hissed at him, baring her fangs. The Australian doctor recoiled.

"Rena," the dark-haired woman interjected into the ensuing silence. "Can you get me what I need?"

"Plasma would be better for you, Sasha," Thirteen murmured, and came over to the chair. Taking her hands gently but firmly from House, the dark haired doctor lifted her foster-sister out of the chair, draping one arm over her shoulder to support the ice-cold vampire. "You over-did it. You need plasma first, blood second."

"I need epinephrine, a steak, rusty water, and oxygen. Or, if we wanna make it easy, _blood._"

"Come on, you blockhead," Thirteen replied. "We'll get you back in bed."

"Wait, wait, wait," she replied. "Dr. Cuddy. If anything weird happens, I want to know about it."

"No!"

Sasha stumbled and would've fallen, but Thirteen and Kutner both caught her, keeping her on her feet. She looked at Cuddy through the curtain of her long, black hair, and hissed, "What?" Between clenched teeth, her lips were pressed thin and white, positively bloodless. "Did you just say no to me?"

"Yes! I want to know what the hell is going on here. How dare you just waltz into my hospital, kill a bunch of madmen, bleed all over my floors and wreck my machinery, and then try to give me orders?"

Sasha looked at the head of the diagnostics department and asked, "Is she always this stupid?"

Cuddy scoffed in disbelief and Sasha snapped, "Crap's gonna happen soon. Don't know when, but sometime. If you don't want people dying, you'd better do exactly what I say. And first thing's first - _feed me_! I'm **_starving_." **

At these words, Kutner hastily scuttled out from under her arm.

Sasha shot him the most poisonous look, and turned away. Things would get tense if she continued staring after him. She needed to focus on Rena, on the slow rhythm of Rena's heart, the soft ebb and flow of her blood, the chill caress of her skin. Anything, anything but the beckoning scent, the seductive call of blood beneath the skin, the smell of fresh meat and the melody of pounding human hearts. She was so cold inside, and they were so warm… so fresh and warm and _alive_….

"Sasha!" Thirteen cried as the vampire warrior moaned and sank to her knees. "Sasha-"

House lunged forward and pulled her to her feet, dragging her down the hallway that led to Cuddy's office. She staggered after him, and they both ignored the cried protests from nurses and doctors. She was fighting to come after him, fighting to reach the glittering, raging flame before her, fighting to find it and catch it and hold it to her, devour it and let her body live again. Her veins screamed for blood, shrieked for sustenance as she scrambled after him, her entire being focused on sinking fangs into the nearest artery and sucking him dry.

"We have to go after them!" Thirteen screamed, rushing after the doctor and the vampire. "She'll kill him."

"What?!" Chase demanded.

"No," Cameron hissed. "No, she will not."

Before anyone could translate that cryptic comment, Thirteen swung her hand around and shoved Cameron back away from the doorway. Without a thought, she sent the message - _Radu. Stop Sasha. Hold her at bay if she threatens a mortal._

_I will not-_

_DO IT!_

Aloud, Thirteen hissed, "Why does your blood stink of starlight?"

"You're imagining things," Cameron replied.

"The fact that you didn't ask me what I meant tells me that you're lying through your teeth. Why do you stink of starlight and the midnight air? Of broom on a hill, and henbane? I never noticed it before, but now… now I can smell it. What are you?"

"This is ridiculous-"

"Answer me. I am of the House of Rampling, daughter of Marius, and you will-"

"I am the House of Kovintra, and you will be silent, blood sucker," Cameron hissed between clenched teeth, and something dark shuddered behind her eyes, slithering to the foreground of the woman's aura. Thirteen, shocked at the revelation, stepped back. She struggled not to bare her teeth in a snarl and hiss her revulsion. Cameron narrowed her eyes, and something sparked behind her eyes. Thirteen stepped back, and snarled.

"You may be of Kovintra, but I am of Rampling, which is far older. Do not cross me, woman. Go near my sister, and I'll kill you myself."

And she turned on her heel and darted after her sister, praying nothing had happened to House. Would Sasha hurt the doctor? In her starved, maddened state, Thirteen couldn't be sure. But she wasn't going to risk her boss's life on the hope that her twin would go against his nature and try to save a human.

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_**Tension, and new information. Intriguing.... Reviews?**_


	7. 006 Remy vs Rena

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Chapter Five

Remy vs. Rena, and All the Problems in Between

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Thirteen paced back and forth in the main diagnostic office, her sneakers sinking into the carpet with every step. Things were bad. Things were really bad, worse than she would have imagined possible. Since when did witches work in hospitals? And how had she not noticed before? That scent, tinged with moonbeams and starlight, darkness and fresh, green leaves… it clung to Doctor Cameron, a second skin that sent Remy's nose to itching. She was a doctor, yes, and so was the blonde ER doc, but at the same time.…

Witch and vampire.

Vampire and witch.

It just wasn't a good combination. Things could go seriously wrong right now with a combination like that. It had the potential for deadliness.

She stopped her pacing, thinking now to Foreman. She hadn't spoken to Foreman since the incident at the Rampling Estate, when her twin brother had attacked the black doctor and the young diagnostician, Dr. Kutner. She hadn't known what to say to the man she'd been sleeping with for four months, the man who was helping her through dealing with her Huntington's disease. Her twin brother, who looked like a shambling, water-bloated corpse with worm fingers and _Shadow of the Vampire_ style fangs, had tried to rip Foreman's throat out.

The idea made her pause. She imagined it for just a moment, and it didn't sicken her as much as it should have. Again, she cursed Radu for what he'd done to her. His thick, sluggish, viscous blood was still suffusing with her cells, warping her back from what she had been for so long – a day walker, they were called, one foot in the world of her people and their preternatural kin, the other foot in the world of the non-endowed, non-gifted humans. She had managed to survive this way, clinging desperately to her façade of human life, until Foreman's life had been the price for her continued existence as a mortal. She couldn't do that, couldn't sacrifice him just because she wanted to escape her hunger for blood. It wasn't the curse the movies and books portrayed it as, so what right did she have to trade someone's life for freedom from what eventually added up to a not-so-major inconvenience?

_You think too much, Rena, _a soft, sibilant voice whispered in her mind like a sere wind. She shivered, but not from revulsion. No, never that. Despite the differences between them – despite what Radu was – she had missed his voice in her mind once she had gone off to college, and then onto med school. Radu's voice continued,

_He is only a human, pretty one. Do not be disturbed by his acceptance, or lack of it. He does not know what he lacks._

Unable to help herself, the doctor snorted, fighting her lips' urge to curl upward into a smile. Yes, her twin told his wife often that her humanity was a waste of time, and to let it go, that it was nothing but fodder for future memories, not to worry about it. So far, Michelle was more human than any of them had ever been, except Remy herself… and Amber.

Biting her lip, she turned her thoughts away from her sister, from her twin brother, and instead focused on the present problem. Allison Cameron was a witch. What Remy was supposed to do about that, she wasn't sure. The witches and the blood sucking legions of the undead – Radu, monitoring her thoughts, snorted at her mental description – had no special quarrel. They were not legendary enemies, as some authors (including Remy's younger foster sister, Amelia, who made her living as a fiction author) would have the mortal world believe. But witches were tricky. They were different, ruled by moonlight and stars, not by the darkness of the night and the crimson song of human blood. Would Cameron go out of her way to cause problems for the newly-reawakened vampire?

_Fear not the witching woman, Rena, _Radu murmured softly.

_If she vexes you overmuch, I will remove the problem for you._

_No, you won't. That's not how I do things, remember? I'm not like you. I want to live like a human. I enjoy it. I like my life. I live as a human, follow human customs, human laws. I have found human love. Don't take that away from me, Radu._

_Human laws, _the absent vampire scoffed. _They cause more problems than they cure._

The words in her head faded away like smoke on the wind, and she turned her mind firmly back to her two (three, a nagging voice hissed) biggest problems: Doctor Cameron and Foreman.

_And Sasha, _her brother reminded her with irritating alacrity.

She bared her teeth in a grimace, hating the fact that he was right. But Remy didn't want to think about Sasha right now. Her foster-sister had her own issues, issues that involved a certain handsome, blue-eyed diagnostician with a mind like Sherlock Holmes and the maturity level of a fourteen-year-old boy. The vampire warrior had last been seen being dragged down the hall by Dr. Gregory House, in search of the hospital's blood bank. Radu's job had been to make sure the black-haired vampire hadn't hurt anyone before getting the opportunity to soothe her hunger with some of the prepackaged blood.

_You did do that, right, Radu?_

_Would I let you down, Rena?_

_Sometimes I wonder, _she thought, acknowledging the irony behind Radu's words. Would he let her down? It would depend on whether he thought it was for her own good or not. He still thought her far too attached to her human lifestyle, despite the fact that in the last four hours, she had rediscovered powers she'd almost forgotten about, and despite the thirst beginning to build in her throat. She hadn't felt the full impact of the thirst in over a full decade – since she'd graduated at age 17 from high school and gone straight onto getting a Bachelor's Degree in medicine in three short years. Her rigorous diet and training regimen in college and med school after that had conditioned her body so that she didn't need blood, and in fact was nearly human. Her DNA had twisted to the point that only the most detailed tests could pick out the discrepancies. Her teeth had receded back into her gums, and her gums had descended to cover a larger portion of her teeth. Her eyes had lost their animal shine, and her skin had darkened. Even her bones had softened, losing their diamond hardness.

She'd made the transition to _solamia_, the Sanguinyte word for the day walker, before remembering that her biological mother had been a _dhampir_ who had died of Huntington's. The odds of her having it were high. The odds of it affecting her, of it killing her, now that she was a day walker… were almost certain. And by then, she had grown to love the luxuries her status had afforded her – lack of light sensitivity, lack nausea from inhaling anything like plant mold, wood chips, saw dust, or dried leaf debris, and most of all, lack of anything resembling the thirst. She hadn't wanted to give up any of it. So she was no longer immortal. Many vampires chose to allow themselves to age and die like humans. She had loved being human….

Until the Huntington's test had come back positive. That had been the reason she hadn't wanted the blasted test in the first place. She had known, deep in the furthest corners of her mind, that the confirmation of her illness would radically change the way she viewed being _solamia_… and she had been right. Then, only one person's blood could save her, and the idea of drinking from him had revolted her. She couldn't force herself to use her brother that way.

In the end, she'd been forced to drink from Radu anyway. And now… now Foreman was a problem. Now, Foreman was an emotional weakness, a vulnerability she could not afford in the war that her sisters, both Sasha and Eustacia, had nearly lost their lives fighting. Foreman, poor and confused, harmless, oh so human Foreman was in danger. And the stupid man didn't know the difference between Remy being dangerous and Remy being the danger that her dangerousness – the bloodsucking variety – would protect him from.

A knock at the door distracted her, and she turned to see the man featured prominently in her thoughts poking his head in through the glass doorway.

"Can I come in?" He asked.

She nodded, slowly. Her heart was pounding, so hard it hurt. She sucked in a breath, trying to calm herself, and felt suddenly sickeningly dizzy and disoriented. She'd forgotten that now the change had been reversed, and she was no longer _solamia_, her need for oxygen was much less. Too much air was not a good thing to a vampire. It was like too much carbon dioxide or monoxide for a human – potentially lethal.

_Like Foreman_, she thought wildly.

Foreman was potentially lethal to her. The conversation she sensed coming soon would have devastating consequences if it didn't go right. But she couldn't think about that right now. If she thought about Foreman leaving, she'd cry, and that would just freak him out more. Vampire tears weren't the most comforting things in the world.

"So, uh…." She began, fiddling with the layered waves of reddish brown hair falling around her shoulders – a definitely human gesture. As a vampire before her change, she had never fidgeted, never squirmed or fiddled with her hair or rubbed her nose or whatever. Now, she was practically a bundle of nerves, and it had only gotten worse since Radu had begun speaking to her in her mind again, and gotten nearly unbearable since drinking her twin's powerful blood. So much energy, and no longer the discipline to contain it to necessary movements. Anxious, she shoved her hands through her hair, and added, "What's up?"

"We need to talk."

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_Okay, peoples, I finally updated my House fic. I've been way busy with my mom retiring and the family reunion and my nanny job and my computer dying. So I've finally updated this fic. I want to really flesh out Thirteen's character – she's unique anyway, and the modifications made to her character have to continually be readjusted when new information comes up from the show. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this brief, mellow look into Dr. Remy (Rena) Hadley. Reviews make my soul shine like a light bulb._


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